


all the way to the horizon

by anabel



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-29 15:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16266746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: Jim's coming home for a visit, and Winona has something to tell him.





	all the way to the horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lah_mrh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lah_mrh/gifts).



“You ready for this?”

The question comes largely because of Winona’s own butterflies, not because of any true qualms about her wife’s ability to handle the situation, and Sara’s arched eyebrow says she’s well aware of the fact. 

“I mean,” Winona hastens to add, “I know you’ve met Jim before, but well, it’s different now.”

Different. That’s one way to put it. 

Sara abandons her efforts to fill an already well-supplied cheese platter, putting down her knife and coming over to Winona. “Your little boy’s a grown-up hero now, but he’s still your son. When I look at him I see your eyes and your smile. I’m not nervous.”

“I am, a little,” Winona admits, though the arm Sara puts around her waist is comforting. She leans her head on Sara’s shoulder. “What will he think when I tell him I not only fell in love again, but eloped? Kids don’t expect their elderly parents to run off to Vegas Prime and get married on a whim.”

“It wasn’t a whim,” Sara says, with the warmth in her voice that always runs up Winona’s spine like the best kind of shiver. “It was fast, sure, but girl, you and I have been dancing around this for years. Decades, if you count that time at the Academy.”

Not for the first time, Winona lets herself momentarily imagine what it might have been like if she and Sara had turned that long-ago Academy weekend into a relationship. If Sara hadn’t had that horrendously difficult Klingon exam to study for, and if Winona hadn’t met George while Sara was holed up in the library, might they have gone on a second date? Maybe they would have married and had their own kids, and be long into comfortable matrimony by now, instead of newylweds bonking five times a day and nervously contemplating breaking the news to Jim. 

But Winona doesn’t regret the way her life has gone. There are many paths to happiness in life, she firmly believes, and all that is open to humans is to find one, and not to regret those untaken. She had happiness with George, and now she has happiness with Sara, and both are good. 

There still remains the prospect of introducing her bride to her son. Winona has a cheese platter, a borrowed BBQ grill, and butterflies.

“Also, watch who you’re calling elderly,” Sara says, and turns Winona’s face to hers with long, cool fingers, leaning in to steal a kiss. 

~*~

Jim’s arrival is certainly memorable.

He shows up at their front door ten minutes before he’s expected, with a bouquet of sunflowers, a bottle of what looks like very expensive whiskey, and a stoic Vulcan at his side. 

“Hello, Mom!” he says, with his father’s famously charming megawatt smile – then turns green, hurriedly hands a bemused Winona the whiskey, shoves the flowers into the Vulcan’s arms, and barely manages to swivel and vomit over the porch rail instead of at their feet.

“Oh, you poor thing!” Sara says, and instantly rushes forward to help support him inside. “Come on into the living room and we’ll get you comfortable. Don’t worry, I’m a nurse, we’ll have this handled in no time.”

Winona, left holding the whiskey, stands in the doorway and regards a nonplussed Vulcan bearing sunflowers. Now that she’s looking at him and not Jim, she recognizes him as Jim’s first officer, Spock. Sarek’s boy. Well, they do say Jim hardly goes anywhere without him, though she wouldn’t necessarily have expected Jim to bring him to her little summer barbeque. Perhaps it’s a cultural experience thing, Spock interested in the quaint customs of his mother’s people.

“Welcome, Mr. Spock,” she says. “Come right in. I’ll find a vase for those.”

As she leads Spock down the hallway and into the kitchen, she can hear Jim’s weak protestations of imminent recovery from the living room, and Sara’s reluctance to believe him. 

“The Captain refused to beam directly here,” Spock says, as Winona trims the sunflowers. “We arranged for ground transportation from the city.”

“That’s nearly two hours away!” Winona says, surprised. “You drove all that way?”

“Not drove,” Spock says. “The Captain expressed a desire to, and I quote, _feel the wind in his hair_. We hired a classic Earth vehicle called a motorcycle.”

Winona tries to imagine Spock riding pillion behind Jim on a motorcycle – while holding whiskey and sunflowers?! – and simply fails. She tries not to boggle at him, but from the stiffening of his already stiff expression, suspects that she fails.

“Well!” she says, brightly, trying to rescue the moment. “That must have been quite the experience. Maybe that’s what unsettled Jim’s stomach.”

“The Captain’s stomach can be … delicate,” Spock allows, with a slight unbending around the eyebrows. “I suspect that in this case, however, the culprit was an unwise breakfast choice.”

“Don’t slander my sausage, Spock,” Jim says from behind Spock’s shoulder. He’s making a wan but gallant try at his usual smile, Winona sees, and lets Sara guide him to a kitchen chair. “It looked all right to me.”

“I will refrain from slandering your sausage,” Spock says, which makes Jim grin and Winona hold back an appalled giggle. That was utterly unfair of Jim, to trap a Vulcan into an innuendo like that. Shame on him. “However, I must point out that the beginning of your green tinge came at an appropriate interval after its consumption.”

Jim shrugs, still grinning. “It’s been so long since we had shore leave and had food that wasn’t from a replicator, that I just couldn’t resist.”

“Well,” Winona says. “When you’re feeling better, we can start the barbeque. There’ll be no suspect sausages on _my_ grill!”

The sunflowers look beautiful in the vase. The whiskey she puts away for later.

~*~

“Chekov was _shot_?”

While it’s usually Sara who does the barbequing in the Kirk-Nivazova household, today she’s captivated by Jim’s stories, and has surrendered her tongs to Winona. While Spock offered to assist, Winona isn’t about to have a vegetarian dealing with hamburgers. Besides, she doubts he (or Jim) is any great shakes at cooking. Having lived in space for most of her life, she knows from first-hand experience how quickly one adapts to the ease of replicators.

“Not only shot, he actually _died_ ,” Jim says. He looks far too relaxed for Chekov’s death to have been permanent, however. Winona isn’t worried; nearly all of Jim’s stories turn out to have happy endings. He’s like that, living a charmed life among the stars. She reminds herself of that sometimes, when he’s out of contact due to secret missions or goes unexpectedly missing, which happens on a disturbingly regular basis.

“So how did you escape?” Sara asks, directing her question to both of their guests.

Jim laughs. “Well, it turned out the bullets weren’t actually real. Spock figured it out. As soon as he mind-melded with us to give our paranoid human brains absolute certainty that the bullets were just shadows, they had no power over us.”

“But you were still stuck on the planet, even if they couldn’t kill you. Did the ship find a way to locate you?”

“There was a violent struggle, during which the Captain had the life of one of our assailants in his hands. When he refused to take it, despite the provocation given, the Melkotians believed our assertion that we came in peace, and returned us unharmed to the _Enterprise_.”

“Including Chekhov,” Jim adds.

“He wasn’t dead?”

“Luckily not. He sends his regards, by the way. He wanted to come along when I mentioned the barbeque – said the Russians invented the barbeque, which I’m fairly sure isn’t true – but I thought I’d save you from a deluge of hungry spacers.”

Winona laughs. “Your crew is always welcome, Jim.” 

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen the appetite of some of my crew! Scotty, for example, now there’s someone who could eat and drink any one of us under the table.”

“The whiskey we brought is a recommendation from Mr. Scott,” Spock informs Winona. “I have confidence in his expertise on the subject.”

“Well, next time bring him along,” Winona says, smiling, and gestures to Sara to bring over the plates. “Grub’s up!”

Real meat’s a rarity in this day and age, and she’s fairly sure it’ll be illegal soon. And perhaps it’ll be for the best – there’s certainly no logical reason for raising meat animals, with the concomitant harm to both flora and fauna, when replicated meat is readily available. Jim’s children, whenever they arrive, may never taste a genuine hamburger, and Winona’s nearly certain that Spock is judging them as primitive barbarians. 

All that said, however, there’s nothing to equal the look on Jim’s face when he takes his first bite of genuine American beef, free-range and grass-fed and one thousand percent delicious.

“How is it?” she asks, wickedly, because his mouth is far too full to answer politely.

Jim waves his hand blissfully.

“There is one answer that eludes me,” Spock says, his fork poised thoughtfully over his plate of grilled vegetables. “Is it the cultural trappings of meat consumption that appeal to humans, or is it simply the sensual pleasure of taste and smell, perhaps hearkening to some primal instinct?”

“Probably a bit of both,” Sara says.

Jim swallows. “Not while I’m _eating_ , Spock. We can talk about sensual pleasure _later_.”

Spock looks vaguely constipated, and Winona shoots Jim a reproachful glare. She knows the two of them are good friends, but there’s teasing and then there’s teasing. 

Jim, looking unrepentant, smiles at Spock and then launches into another story, this one revolving around being held hostage by an alien who called himself the ancient god Apollo. For a ship’s captain, Jim certainly seems to go on a lot of landing parties, and to often take Spock with him. It seems a little foolhardy to Winona, putting the ship’s top two officers in danger together, but if it works for them, it works. 

She passes Spock the potato salad and settles in for a pleasant afternoon.

~*~

It isn’t until Winona is wrapping up leftovers for Jim and Spock to take back to their hungry crew that she realizes that in all the hullaballoo around Jim’s dramatic arrival, she entirely forgot to make her big announcement. 

She pauses in consternation, hands frozen holding a bag of hamburger buns. 

“Is something troubling you?” Spock asks. 

He’s standing in the doorway from the kitchen to the deck, not quite leaning against the doorframe but somehow managing to look at his ease, or as close to it as a Vulcan can get. Over the past few hours, something in his shoulders relaxed – perhaps when he was trouncing Sara in chess? - and now he almost looks like he might allow himself a smile.

“No,” she says. “Or yes, maybe.”

There’s no reason she should confide in Spock. As a Vulcan, human emotions must be boring to him at best, if not uncomfortable. Winona’s been in more than one Starfleet HR seminar about how to relate to your Vulcan coworkers.

Yet something about Spock is open, inviting, and before she can think twice she finds herself going on. “It’s just that there’s something I need to tell Jim, and I’m a little nervous.”

He watches her with those mild, thoughtful eyes. “Your son highly respects you, Commander. The odds of you receiving a negative reaction are minimal.”

“I don’t expect a negative reaction,” she says, then sighs. “I’m not nervous for any logical reason. I just am. Butterflies, you know.”

“I am aware of the human propensity for illogical nerves,” Spock says, and she’s fairly certain - _fairly_ certain – that that’s a joke, though she hasn’t really heard of a Vulcan joking before. But there’s what can only be described as a twinkle in his eyes, and the slightest of quirks around his mouth. 

“What’re we talking about?” Jim says, coming in with Sara.

Sara meets Winona’s gaze. It’s not exactly the way Winona expected to break the news, standing in their little homey kitchen with the grandfather clock and the leftover barbeque and the tea towels that say something rude in Klingon, but it’s time.

“There’s something I need to tell you, Jim,” she says, and puts the hamburger buns down.

He stills, hearing something in her voice. “Nothing bad?” he says, quickly. 

She smiles reassuringly. “Nothing bad.”

“You giving up the desk job to get back into space?”

“Eventually, maybe.” The stars do call to Winona, though she loves their little house and all the joys of being planetside. Maybe in a couple years, when their next promotions come around, she and Sara will take space postings again. There’s no rush. She intends to live a good many years yet, and fit a lot of living in those years, whether on land or in the sky. 

“You’re getting a motorcycle! You’re going on a secret spy mission into Romulan space!”

Jim’s guesses are becoming increasingly farfetched. Winona laughs, and suddenly it’s easy. “I got married, Jim.”

His look of surprise is matched by Spock’s look of unsurprise. “What?”

“Surprise!” Winona says, and smiles at him.

His initial shock quickly fades, and next thing she knows, she’s being scooped up in a hug. “Congratulations!” he says into her hair, holding her close.

There’s history behind this day, and both of them know it. Two marriages, one happy and one unhappy; both left her broken-hearted in different ways. But Winona Kirk is a fighter, and she never takes her eyes off the horizon. Better days will come to the woman who strives for them, and she thinks she’s found her better days at last.

“Who’s the lucky fellow?” Jim says, when he releases her at last. “Anyone I know?”

Spock sighs. (Sighs! Now Winona’s seen everything. A Vulcan, sighing!) “Sometimes, Jim, you can be rather obtuse.”

In someone else’s mouth, the words might have sounded cutting. Somehow in Spock’s they seem almost – fond? Winona must be imagining things, just like she must be imagining the way Jim looks back at Spock in answer, his eyes laughing. 

“Jim,” Winona says, breaking into whatever’s going on between her son and his First Officer. “This is my wife, Sara Nivazova.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Jim says, dramatically striking his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Mr. Spock, you are entirely correct, as always. I am obtuse as hell today.”

“We meant to tell you when you got here,” Sara says, “but…”

“But I had my little incident. What a first impression to make on my new stepmother.”

Sara smiles. “The first impression I had of you, young man, was when you stumbled into Academy sickbay and I couldn’t tell at first glance if you were wasted six ways to Sunday or if you were having one of the worst allergic reactions I’d seen in my career.”

Jim winces comically. “Any chance I can get you to forget that first impression?” He detaches himself from Winona’s side and delivers an elegantly archaic bow. “James Tiberius Kirk, at your service, decorated starship captain and certainly not a juvenile delinquent of any kind.”

“You liked my potato salad,” Sara says. “Anyone who likes my cooking is fine by me. Also I love your mother, so I think I’m contractually bound to love her kids too.”

“Works for me,” Jim says. 

Then there’s more hugging, and laughing, and Winona forgets that she was ever nervous in the first place, here in her kitchen surrounded by people she loves.

~*~

After they’ve gone, the house seems much quieter.

“So,” Sara says, putting the dishes away in the cupboards. “I thought that went well.”

Winona, still buzzing with happiness, thinks so too. Nor was this her last chance to see Jim before he’s off traveling the galaxy again. The _Enterprise_ will be in system for three more weeks, with Jim and his officers giving evidence in an important diplomatic matter. Before he and Spock left to return to the ship, Winona and Sara made them promise that they’d come back next weekend, and bring several officers with them. Winona doesn’t get enough chances to see Jim these days, not in person, and she intends to make the most of this one.

She says as much to Sara, and adds, “Hopefully it won’t be a long time before he’s back in system again. Long-distance calls just aren’t the same.”

Most of the whiskey is still left. She tucks the bottle away, making a mental note to bring it out next weekend. Mr. Scott should surely have the chance to taste the fruits of his recommendation.

“You know,” Sara says, looking thoughtful, “I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something up with Jim and Spock.”

“Maybe they have an announcement of their own to make.”

They share a laugh, though there’s something in the back of Winona’s mind that wonders whether there might be more truth in it than she’s letting herself realize. Well. If there is, Jim will tell her in his own good time, and goodness knows she’d be happy to see him find his own path to happiness. 

Here in her kitchen, with her bride smiling at her in that way that makes her heart skip a beat, Winona sees only blue sky ahead, all the way to the horizon. 

“C’mon,” she says, and grins. “Race you to bed.”

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> ~ The two TOS episodes referenced are "Spectre of the Gun" and "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Of course, events may have gone slightly differently in the alternate universe!  
> ~ "Real" meat (as opposed to replicated) would indeed become illegal by the time of the TNG episode "Lonely Among Us".


End file.
